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DOHA: Customers at Al Meera market on Saturday. The writing in Arabic reads “Let’s support national products”.—AFP

THE Qatar crisis proves two things: the continued infantilisation of the Arab states, and the total collapse of the Sunni Muslim unity supposedly created by Donald Trump’s preposterous attendance at the Saudi summit two weeks ago.

After promising to fight to the death against Shia Iranian “terror,” Saudi Arabia and its closest chums have now ganged up on one of the wealthiest of their neighbours, Qatar, for being a fountainhead of “terror”.
Only Shakespeare’s plays could come close to describing such treachery. Shakespeare’s comedies, of course.

For, truly, there is something vastly fantastical about this charade. Qatar’s citizens have certainly contributed to IS. But so have Saudi Arabia’s citizens. No Qataris flew the 9/11 planes into New York and Washington. All but four of the 19 killers were Saudi. Bin Laden was not a Qatari. He was a Saudi.

But Bin Laden favoured Qatar’s Al Jazeera channel with his personal broadcasts, and it was Al Jazeera who tried to give spurious morality to the Al Qaeda/Jabhat al-Nusrah desperadoes of Syria by allowing their leader hours of free airtime to explain what a moderate, peace-loving group they all were.

First, let’s just get rid of the hysterically funny bits of this story. I see that Yemen is breaking air links with Qatar. Quite a shock for the poor Qatari emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, since Yemen — under constant bombardment by his former Saudi and Emirati chums — doesn’t have a single serviceable airliner left with which to create, let alone break, an air link.

The Maldives have also broken relations with Qatar. To be sure, this has nothing to do with the recent promise of a Saudi five-year loan facility of $300m to the Maldives, the proposal of a Saudi property company to invest $100m in a family resort in the Maldives and a promise by Saudi Islamic scholars to spend $100,000 on 10 “world class” mosques in the Maldives. And let us not mention the rather large number of IS and other Islamist cultists who arrived to fight for IS in Iraq and Syria from — well, the Maldives.

Now the Qatari Emir hasn’t enough troops to defend his little country should the Saudis decide to request that he ask their army to enter Qatar to restore stability — as the Saudis persuaded the King of Bahrain to do back in 2011. But Sheikh Tamim no doubt hopes that the massive US military air base in Qatar will deter such Saudi generosity.

When I asked his father, Sheikh Hamad (later uncharitably deposed by Tamim) why he didn’t kick the Americans out of Qatar, he replied: “Because if I did, my Arab brothers would invade me.” Like father, like son, I suppose. God Bless America.

All this started — so we are supposed to believe — with an alleged hacking of the Qatar News Agency, which produced some uncomplimentary but distressingly truthful remarks by Qatar’s emir about the need to maintain a relationship with Iran.

Qatar denied the veracity of the story. The Saudis decided it was true and broadcast the contents on their own normally staid (and immensely boring) state television network. The upstart emir, so went the message, had gone too far this time. The Saudis decided policy in the Gulf, not miniscule Qatar. Wasn’t that what Trump’s visit proved?

But the Saudis had other problems to worry about. Kuwait, far from cutting relations with Qatar, is now acting as a peacemaker between Qatar and the Saudis and Emiratis. The emirate of Dubai is quite close to Iran, has tens of thousands of Iranian expatriates, and is hardly following Abu Dhabi’s example of anti-Qatari wrath.

Oman was even staging joint naval manoeuvres with Iran a couple of months ago. Pakistan long ago declined to send its army to help the Saudis in Yemen, because the Saudis asked for only Sunni and no Shia soldiers; the Pakistani army was understandably outraged to realise that Saudi Arabia was trying to sectarianise its military personnel. Pakistan’s former army commander, General Raheel Sharif, is rumoured to be on the brink of resigning as head of the Saudi-sponsored Muslim alliance to fight “terror”.

President-Field Marshal Abdel Fatah al-Sisi of Egypt has been roaring against Qatar for its support of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood — and Qatar does indeed support the now-banned group which Sisi falsely claims is part of IS — but significantly Egypt, though the recipient of Saudi millions, also does not intend to supply its own troops to bolster the Saudis in its catastrophic Yemen war. Besides, Sisi needs his Egyptian soldiers at home to fight off IS attacks and maintain, along with Israel, the siege of the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

But if we look a bit further down the road, it’s not difficult to see what really worries the Saudis. Qatar also maintains quiet links with the Asad regime. It helped secure the release of Syrian Christian nuns in Jabhat al-Nusrah hands and has helped release Lebanese soldiers from IS hands in western Syria. When the nuns emerged from captivity, they thanked both Bashar al-Asad and Qatar.

And there are growing suspicions in the Gulf that Qatar has much larger ambitions: to fund the rebuilding of post-war Syria. Even if Asad remained as president, Syria’s debt to Qatar would place the nation under Qatari economic control.

And this would give tiny Qatar two golden rewards. It would give it a land empire to match its Al Jazeera media empire. And it would extend its largesse to the Syrian territories, which many oil companies would like to use as a pipeline route from the Gulf to Europe via Turkey, or via tankers from the Syrian port of Lattakia.

For Europeans, such a route would reduce the chances of Russian oil blackmail, and make sea-going oil routes less vulnerable if vessels did not have to move through the Gulf of Hormuz.

So rich pickings for Qatar — or for Saudi Arabia, of course, if the assumptions about US power of the two emirs, Hamad and Tamim, prove worthless. A Saudi military force in Qatar would allow Riyadh to gobble up all the liquid gas in the emirate. But surely the peace-loving “anti-terror” Saudis — let’s forget the head-chopping for a moment — would never contemplate such a fate for an Arab brother.

So let’s hope that for the moment, the routes of Qatar Airways are the only parts of the Qatari body politics to get chopped off.

On DawnNews

Comments (29) Closed

Shakil

Jun 11, 2017 10:17am

Robert Frisk, an outstanding Middle Eastern affairs English journalist, has well encapsulated the Middle Eastern oil and terror muddle in his own witty style. There are the kings and the emirs who control and enjoy the oil wealth, and there is the west who needs the oil and the routes through which it is transported, and there is the Middle where it all this happens. And also there are international competing forces and neighboring poor Muslim countries who think must have a piece of the pie. The west and the Middle East need to have a mechanism to ensure their common interests to remain protected. Terrorism was being blamed on them by the world as such a mechanism, but they have created a scape goat in the shape of Qatar to divert all the world's blame to one point that is Qatar, which everybody knows is a temporary ploy as entire Middle East is a monolithic entity and cannot remain divided for long.

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Mustafa Ali Shah

Jun 11, 2017 10:33am

Democracy desperately required in the Middle East. Kings will ruin the Arabs. Saudis are playing with fire.

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Anand

Jun 11, 2017 10:38am

A very comprehensive narrative of the murky designs in the gulf. Congratulate the author for making the reader go through the nuances of gulf politics. I would request another article, from the Saudi perspective as well. Thanks a lot.

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Imtiaz Mahmood

Jun 11, 2017 11:44am

@Mustafa Ali Shah

House of Saud does not endorse democracy till oil fuels the free lunch.

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Eddy Tari

Jun 11, 2017 11:46am

Excellent article. Hope there is a similarly enlighting article in Urdu.

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Fudayl Z. Ahmad

Jun 11, 2017 01:01pm

Excellent article, with a lot of information and humor. Robert Fisk you rock!

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Nadeem

Jun 11, 2017 01:08pm

damn good!!

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Ayaz

Jun 11, 2017 01:20pm

Excellent article......and very true as well.

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Riaz Uddin

Jun 11, 2017 01:41pm

Division of Muslims in Shia and Sunni has resulted in ruining Iraq and Syria Saudi Arabia and Iran shuold pursue the policy of tolerance and prevent themselves to have an edge over the other in middle East.

Pakistan should play its due role in diffusing tension and acrimony that had developed between Saudi Arabia and Iran in recent years.
.

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Tufail khan

Jun 11, 2017 02:17pm

Very informative article,the author deserve applaud.The Qatar crisis and its various dimensions have been explained.For countries like Pakistan to exercise a balance foreign policy this article is providing enough--

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Global Peace

Jun 11, 2017 03:16pm

Perfect

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Truth

Jun 11, 2017 06:48pm

Robert Fisk has brilliantly unmasked the Saudi hypocrisy. After getting orders from Donald Trump Saudis has blocked the only land border with Qatar even denying eatables during the blessed month of Ramadan. What a shame!

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Jawaid Kamal

Jun 11, 2017 06:54pm

Simply brilliant,like none other.

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Qamar uddin

Jun 12, 2017 05:13am

It's been a really long time since I've read something that's written really good with inside jokes. Hope you'll write more in the coming days. And I would be really greatfull if u write something about US military interventions around the globe.

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Mohammad Ashraf

Jun 12, 2017 06:57am

Excellent analysis

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KenSAM59

Jun 12, 2017 08:10am

Great article. Wish more countries could see it.

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Paban KUMAR

Jun 12, 2017 10:27am

Excellent analysis of the prevailing Middle East political conditions .

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farida rahman

Jun 12, 2017 11:55am

Very sad ---but true .

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Ijaz

Jun 12, 2017 03:36pm

Brilliant incisive article.

Saudis are the greatest threat to peace and stability in the region and the unity of Muslims.

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Bency J Babu

Jun 12, 2017 05:35pm

Thanks Dawn for another great article.... This is what journalism is.. Appreciation from an Indian

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Defender

Jun 12, 2017 06:18pm

Nice story

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Kashif

Jun 12, 2017 10:22pm

Right on the spot.

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Muzaffar Ali

Jun 13, 2017 12:44am

Saudis are playing with fire and Pakistan should stay away from this....

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Rehman

Jun 13, 2017 01:23am

Not for a good future for the Middle East in the long run despite all the oil wealth, if this sort of politics persists. It is easy to forget Iraq too was relatively well off due to its oil economy, before it all collapsed. Quite depressing.

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sri1

Jun 13, 2017 06:55am

@Riaz Uddin "Pakistan should play its due role in diffusing tension and acrimony that had developed between Saudi Arabia and Iran in recent years"
Yes, of course. 1. Once it puts its own house in order,if at all possible. 2. Tackles Extremism 3. Economy 3. Education 4. Semblance of real sovereignty

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Munir Ahmad Kakar

Jun 13, 2017 12:30pm

Wonder as to how the Saudi Kings have succeeded in hoodwinking the whole world. Presidents, Prime Ministers, Amirs and CEOs are all out there to do their bidding. No family in recent history may have enjoyed such absolute power, such fabulous wealth, such ruthless suppression of human rights but such an outstanding standing internationally. It has terrorized the world and will continue to do so and innocents will continue to fell victim to it. It will keep on destabilizing Muslim countries but will go scot-free.

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Iqbal

Jun 13, 2017 01:08pm

An excellent article and a very farsighted analysis of the "Brother".

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Gyanendra Kumar Dvivedi

Jun 14, 2017 06:44am

Super article. Thank you to help in understanding gulf politics without any bias